Wilde Times
by Musegaarid
Summary: When Crowley woke up from his hundred year nap, he found that a lot of things had changed... Pairings: AziraphaleOC and AziraphaleCrowley if you squint. Warnings: slash, language
1. Wilde Times

Crowley awoke from his nearly century long nap in January of 1895. He took a day or two to wake up fully and padded around his flat getting rid of the dust of decades. A look out of the window showed him the latest fashion and Crowley found himself much enamored with the new trousers and top hats. He'd never liked pantaloons and hose. He also, by chance, caught sight of a man wearing spectacles with smoky lenses. He tried those on as well, looked in the mirror, and laughed in relief. No longer would he have to give himself headaches trying to maintain human-looking eyes or wear wide-brimmed hats. Crowley already loved this new world and he set out to explore it.

A week later and Crowley was still in shock. How could things have changed so much in only a hundred years? Now there were horseless carriages, electric lights, photographs, newspapers, steam trains, telephones, indoor plumbing, and mass production of goods. The same queen had ruled England for fifty-eight years and the British Empire ruled the world. He marveled that such progress that had been made despite the stuffy, ultra-conservative culture (he suspected the angel had a hand in that) and kicked himself for sleeping so long during what had proved to be an interesting time. He vowed that he would never do that again. Besides, adapting all at once was proving to be quite disconcerting.

Another week and Crowley felt integrated into the world once more. He felt he was master enough of the new fashions, manners, and language to go pay a little visit to Aziraphale.

The bookstore was in the same place that it had been for over two hundred years and appeared completely unchanged. Crowley strolled through the locked front door, leaving his cane in the umbrella stand and placing his top hat on the hat rack near the door. He walked into the backroom and stopped dead.

There was a man in the room with Aziraphale and he was sitting in Crowley's chair. In fact, he was sitting in his shirtsleeves, smiling roguishly, and touching the angel's hand. Aziraphale was blushing. It took them a moment to react to Crowley's sudden intrusion but after a slight pause both men stood up.

"Crowley! What are you…" Aziraphale stared at the well dressed demon in his new smoky glasses as if he had seen a ghost. Or as if a ghost had seen him. Then he shook his head to clear it and turned back to the stranger. "Mr. Oscar Wilde, may I present to you Mr. Anthony Crowley. He is a… colleague of mine."

Wilde was much more composed than Aziraphale at being found in such a situation and he turned attentively to Crowley. "Ah! Another bookseller, then?"

Crowley sneered. "Certainly not."

Wilde looked puzzled when Crowley didn't elaborate further and Aziraphale just looked anxious. After a moment, Aziraphale tried to diffuse the growing tension.

"Crowley, I haven't seen you in… in quite a while. Please have a seat and tell us what you've been doing with yourself."

Crowley's eyes fell on the only two chairs in the room and he looked back at the angel with one eyebrow raised. "And where shall I sit precisely?"

"Oh!" Aziraphale exclaimed, flustered. "Let me go fetch another from the other room."

He left hurriedly. Crowley knew for certain that he didn't have any other chairs out there, but figured he was miracling one out of sight. He and Wilde stared at each other silently and Crowley took the opportunity to study the man before him. He was tall and lanky with long, dark hair and a rather horsy face featuring thick lips and deep set eyes. He looked to be about forty and Crowley would have written him off as a dandy if it weren't for the cunning expression. Eventually, Aziraphale returned with a matching chair and they all sat down stiffly.

"Crowley, Mr. Wilde is…"

"Call me Oscar. Please."

"Oscar…" Aziraphale blushed, "is an author. He's written a number of well-received novels and plays."

"In fact, I have a new play opening in a week or so. It's called _The Importance of Being Earnest_."

"Indeed," said Crowley. "I am something of a patron of the theatre."

"Ah ha! So that is your profession, Mr. Critic. I should have known from your sullen disposition." Wilde grinned. "I knew I would determine it eventually. I always do, you know. Regardless, you must come and see my little show. You look like a man of the world and I would be greatly desirous of your opinion on the work. Won't you attend tonight's rehearsal? I won't take no for an answer."

Crowley looked at Aziraphale. "Will you be in attendance,…?" He trailed off, not knowing what Aziraphale was calling himself these days.

But Wilde was the one to reply. "I'm afraid Mr. Fell has another engagement for this evening, but please do not let that keep you from attending."

_Mr. Fell?_ thought Crowley. _Oh, the irony._

"Come to the St. James Theatre at 7 o'clock and show them your card for admittance. Your presence must and will spur my actors on to superior heights, for I can tell even on our slight acquaintance that you are the kind of man whose good opinion once lost can never be regained."

Aziraphale made a choking kind of noise. Crowley smirked.

"You are a perceptive man."

Wilde smiled. "I like to think so."

Crowley stood. "Very well, I will be at the St. James at 7 o'clock. For now I must take my leave. Good day, Fell and to you, Mr. Wilde." He retrieved his cane and hat and headed back to his flat, mind reeling, as he wondered just what the angel gotten himself into this time.

He arrived at the theatre that night at 7:45 knowing full well that the rehearsal wouldn't have even started yet. He was proved correct when the small, obsequious house manager showed him into the theatre. Crowley chose a seat near the back of the house, giving him a good view of everything occurring on the stage as well as in the audience. There were about fifteen people scattered about in the seats, which made it easy to pick out Wilde. He was in the front center of the room whispering head to head with an attractive, young, blonde man. Crowley narrowed his eyes and resolved to watch them when Wilde stood up, abruptly.

"Places everyone!" He called. "From the top!" Wilde returned to his seat and the lights went down.

The play was actually quite entertaining. Crowley particularly liked the immoral character, Algernon, and his paradoxical pronouncements. Based solely upon the witty play, he thought he might have actually liked Wilde, had he met him under different circumstances. As it was though, Crowley slipped into the lobby at intermission and located the greasy house manager. A few bills changed hands and Crowley learned the identity of the man Wilde was sitting with. He was the Lord Alfred Douglas, but everyone apparently called him by the improbable nickname of Bosie. It was rumored that he and Wilde were very close indeed. With this knowledge, he headed back in to watch the rest of the play. Considering the trite happy ending, he wished he'd left at intermission.

Wilde caught his eye as he tried to leave the theatre.

"Anthony, my dear man, what did you think of it."

Crowley looked at him coldly. "Call me Mr. Crowley. Please."

Wilde grinned. "Oh dear me. Theatre critic. I nearly forgot. You are an irascible lot, aren't you. Very well then, Mr. Crowley, what did you think?"

"I think it will be very popular," said Crowley as he turned on his heel and left.

The next day, Crowley returned to the bookstore hoping to talk to Aziraphale alone. He walked in cautiously, remembering the awkwardness of the day before. The angel was not in the main part of the shop, nor in the backroom when Crowley peeked his head in. He was about to leave when he heard a cry coming from upstairs. Reacting solely on instinct, Crowley rushed up the stairs and was ready to fling the door open when he heard an answering moan and froze. He recognized both of those voices and from here it really didn't sound like they were in danger...

_It couldn't be… But he's an… They…_

He fled.

By the time he had any sense of himself again, he was in St. James Park with no memory of how he got there. In his wake there was a trail of enormous chaos, but it was merely a fraction of the chaos in his mind. Crowley felt completely adrift, as if the bedrock of his universe had suddenly washed away, and more than anything it made him angry. Why it did so, he refused to examine. He did, however, calm down enough to decide what he was going to do next. He was going to follow Wilde. And if Wilde did anything to hurt Aziraphale, he was going to deal with him.

For the next two days, Crowley tracked Wilde across London. He followed the man everywhere, from his house to his club, the theatre, the homes of his acquaintances, back to Aziraphale's shop once (where he stood in the pouring rain for two hours, gritting his teeth, and trying not to kill the man then and there) and finally on the second evening to the home of Lord Douglas.

After an hour of lurking in the shadows near the house (1), Crowley decided to move in closer for a better look. There was a light on in one of the rooms on the second floor, so he discretely materialized his wings and flew up. It was a bedroom and inside, Wilde was enthusiastically buggering Bosie. Crowley went still and calm, which Aziraphale would have recognized as his most dangerous mood, and he sank back down to the ground, tucking his wings away.

(1) Crowley was an accomplished lurker. He just usually arranged things so that he wouldn't have to do it.

"You fucking bastard," he said quietly. "You could have had an angel... Well, you've chosen your bed and now I'm going to make you lie in it."

Over the next day and a half, Crowley gathered information and made his plans, which is why one afternoon, he was seen leaving his calling card at the elegant residence of the Marquess of Queensberry, and heard saying, "Is the Marquess at home? I must speak to him on an urgent personal matter."

_The Importance of Being Earnest_ opened on February 14, 1895 to rave reviews. The Marquess of Queensberry, Lord Douglas' father, was not permitted to attend. Four days later, the Marquess left a card at Wilde's club reading, "For Oscar Wilde, posing as a sodomite." Two weeks later, at the urging of Bosie, Wilde sued the Marquess for libel.

The day the story first broke in the papers, Crowley returned to the bookshop to see how Aziraphale was taking the news of Wilde's infidelity. He found the angel sitting in the back room staring into a cup of tea. Crowley sank into his chair and looked at him anxiously.

"Aziraphale? Are you all right?"

"Aziraphale," murmured the angel, lost in his own world. "That is my real name, isn't it. No one ever says it but you, Crowley."

"That's because no one else knows that you're an angel."

"No. I don't suppose they do. Sometimes I seem to forget as well..."

Crowley looked over his glasses at Aziraphale. "I don't. You'll remember, too, just as soon as you have some wiles to thwart. Come on, let me tempt you to lunch at The Savoy. My treat…"

Aziraphale smiled faintly. "I won't let you get away without paying, dear boy."

Crowley stood, helped Aziraphale to his feet and threaded their arms together. "I wouldn't expect anything less of you, angel."


	2. Epilogue

Aziraphale was never quite the same after the Wilde trials. Crowley had thought he might go into a rebound relationship with another poet, but he never did. The demon would have known. He just tended to be quieter: worked and read more, ate less. Then one day in early December, 1900, Aziraphale disappeared.

Crowley found him a week later in the Cimetière de Bagneux in Paris. He was sitting against a tree staring at a gravestone. Without looking up, he began to speak quietly.

"'And alien tears will fill for him, Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn.'" Aziraphale looked up with red-rimmed but dry eyes. "He was a good man."

Crowley silently disagreed but sat down next to Aziraphale. "Yeah, I, uh, heard he converted on his deathbed. Got his last rites and everything. 'Course he also complained about the wallpaper."

Aziraphale laughed weakly. Crowley looked sideways at him through smoked lenses.

"They always die, angel. No matter how smart, witty, or imaginative they are."

"Some of them achieve grace first."

"A few."

"You'll never die and leave me, Crowley."

Crowley wrapped an arm around Aziraphale. "No, angel. I won't."


End file.
